What Prompted This Facebook Chief to Resign?

the fact that Facebook’s large size and increasing appetite for user data has reminded its members that it is in fact a business. As Forbes noted back in April — even before the Social Network went public — Facebook has lost its cool factor. Author John D. Sutter gave the publication several possible moments of when the social network stopped being hip. “Maybe it was when users realized how much data Facebook was collecting about them,” he postulated. “Maybe it was when CEO Zuckerberg started to seem less like that geeky, counterculture college kid and more like a run-of-the-mill billionaire.”

Ross first came to Facebook through the social network acquisition of Parakey, a web operating system that was still in stealth at the time. He began his career at the company as an engineer, and later he began Product Manager and then later was promoted to the Director of Product position.

High profile departures have cooled as late, but after Facebook made its initial public offering and shares began to slide rapidly as concerns over its potential profitability began to surface, analysts took the flight of upper management officials as further indication of trouble. These resignations included Chief Technology Officer Bret Taylor and product management head Carl Sjogreen. “Facebook is no longer the upstart,” one observer told BusinessInsider. “It is now the middle aged man with a stock crisis.” And a middle-aged with a stock crisis is very far from the height of cool. Maybe that general view contributed to Facebook’s loss of coolness as well.